


Tell Me About How This Will Ruin Us

by shrink



Category: Morrissey (Musician), The Smiths
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-29
Updated: 2013-01-29
Packaged: 2017-11-27 10:48:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/661123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shrink/pseuds/shrink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One day in the life of Johnny Marr written in response to the quote by Johnny, “I was nursemaiding people when I needed nursemaiding myself….was I prepared to walk away from the fame, the attention and get no end of shit for it? But I was like, Being back with my folks, being back at home if I have to be, being skint---it’s better than this.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tell Me About How This Will Ruin Us

**Author's Note:**

> To avoid confusion, Stephen Street is referred to as “Streety” which I’ve heard in a few interviews—and also I’m assuming James is opening for the Smiths, so Tim Booth is the “Tim” that Grant Showbiz is talking about.

**Tell Me about How This Will Ruin Us**  
  
_“Sure, it’s good to feel things, and if it hurts, we’re doing it ourselves, or so the saying goes….”_  
-from “Road Music” by Richard Siken  
  
**4:20 AM**  
  
“You need to come over,” Morrissey’s voice is calm.  
  
And Johnny knows it’s a plea, not a demand. He imagines Morrissey’s curled back, the nape of his neck exposed, the phone’s receiver catching every strained breath.  
  
Outside, the night is sharp despite the hour, but Johnny hadn’t been sleeping anyway. The roads are dead on the drive over, but he doesn’t bother to turn on the radio to fight the silence.  
  
The door to Morrissey’s flat is already hanging open for him, so he shoves his extra key back into his pocket.  
  
“What’s the matter?” he steps over the pile of records uncharacteristically scattered across an otherwise spotless floor. Morrissey sits in the center of all of them.  
  
“Nothing,” his eyes are glazed over. The end of a James record catches. This was the third night this week he’d called the guitarist over.  
  
“You’re tired,” Johnny says, pulling the other man up and onto the sofa with him. The singer’s head falls onto Johnny’s shoulder. He closes his eyes. This is what he wanted, but no matter how articulate he is in the daylight, he still can’t ask for what he needs. Johnny frowns and stares at Morrissey’s hands tangled in his own without really seeing them.  
  
When he is sure the other man was breathing evenly enough to sleep through what was left of the night, he slides off the sofa. He has to get home. This might be cause for a fight in the morning, but if he’s lucky, the annoyance will be another thing Morrissey keeps to himself.  
  
**7:30 AM**  
  
Outside of Morrissey’s flat, the sky is melon and orange, and for a moment he considers it before running through the list of general tasks at hand for the day. No matter how many nights he passes up sleep, he never seems to get ahead.  
  
He has to pick up his guitar back at his house then head to the studio. Streety would be waiting. When he unlocks the door, he finds Andy sprawled across his couch. The blonde’s coat is still buttoned up to his chin. “Hey,” he nudges his friend. He can hear his dogs are pawing in the back room to be left out.  
  
“Get up,” he persists, leaving momentarily to let the Alsatians out.  
  
Andy shifts and shuffles his limbs into a comfortable position.  
  
“When did you get here?” Johnny asks, as he refills the dogs’ dish in the next room before letting them back in.  
  
“Dunno,” the blonde half yawns, “not long ago---one of the sound guys dropped me off.”  
  
“We’re recording this morning,” Johnny reminds his friend, ignoring the other man’s general pallor.  
  
“I thought you were recording last night,” Andy’s eyes trail the other man as he pulls his shirt over his head, paces over to the dryer and shrugs on a presumably clean sweater.  
  
“We aren’t done, and I told Streety we’d have the rhythm down today.”  
  
“Can you come back in an hour and get me?” Andy asks, as the dogs wag their tails and placed their noses in his face.  
  
Johnny knows what Andy needs that hour for, “just come with me now.”  
  
“An hour,” Andy insists, “and I’ll be fine.”  
  
It’s better, the guitarist reasons, for his friend to shoot up in his living room than the bathroom of the studio.  
  
“Okay,” he secures the Rickenbacker in its case and heads back out.  
  
**8:50 AM**  
  
“Who is it?” Johnny leans back in the chair behind the sound board. Stephen Street had said something about grabbing another amp and hadn’t returned. But it wasn’t him standing in the door.  
  
“The hotel wants to know what you want the breakfast to include next week,” the studio receptionist said with a shrug.  
  
“Tell them to talk to Rough Trade.”  
  
“Rough Trade told them to talk to you,” she sighs impatiently, and Johnny picks up the phone.  
  
“Yeah, yeah, that’s fine,” Johnny sets the phone in the receiver and blinks slowly. It was usually better to just take care of it. He picks up his guitar and strums lightly, zoning out.  
  
“Hey,” Morrissey’s coat hangs loosely off his shoulders, and he doesn’t take it off as he settles into the seat next to the other man. It was unusual these days to catch the singer in the studio unless it was absolutely necessary. “You left,” Morrissey’s isn’t looking at him, and Johnny has to resist the sigh edging up his throat.  
  
“I had to,” Johnny shrugs; if he doesn’t act like it means anything then maybe it won’t, “studio stuff to work out---but do you want to get breakfast later?”  
  
“Why later?” Morrissey tilts his head back, bored.  
  
“I have to go pick up Andy,” Johnny grabs his keys.  
  
“So you went out with him then?” Morrissey tries and fails to ask casually.  
  
“No,” Johnny lights a cigarette, then waves a hand to clear the smoke away from his brown eyes.  
  
“Can I come with you?” There was something naïve in the question. Something that took Johnny back two years to when they’d ride around in his car with some vague destination, as a flimsy excuse to get away from everyone.  
  
But there was a destination now. Sometimes Andy’s eyes couldn’t focus, sometimes he was just clumsy and maybe Morrissey wouldn’t even notice. But there could be tremors, and they couldn’t be explained away.  
  
“I thought you had an interview soon,” Johnny leans forward and brushes his lips against the side of the taller man’s temple. Morrissey’s hair was buzzed above his ears, and Johnny liked the soft feel of it against his lips.  
  
“I’m hungry,” Morrissey is quiet, and wraps a discreet hand around Johnny’s waist. He shifts slightly so their lips met. The kiss is soft and slow, but it’s hard for Johnny to focus. Morrissey inhaled shakily, and Johnny pulls him closer, wanting to feel it, wanting this to still matter. The lit cigarette between Johnny’s fingers singes his skin and he draws away.  
  
“Moz, later okay?” The burning brings his eyes back to the clock. He crushes the cigarette against the ashtray then grabs his coat, “Streety will be back in a minute.”  
  
“Yeah,” Morrissey says, purposely withdrawn, looking at some notes scribbled on sheet music. He takes the loose papers with him to the armchair away from the door and licks the corner of his lip thoughtfully.  
  
Johnny zips his coat wand walks to the door. It was too early, he supposes, even for his charm.  
  
**9:20 AM**  
  
“Are you awake?” the house is quiet, except for the muted TV projecting blues and greens on the wall.  
  
It’s raining, and black hairs are plastered to the sides of his face.  
  
“Yeah,” Andy is sitting where Johnny had left him; with his coat was off. One of the dogs is laying on it on the sofa next to him. “Hey one of the club promoters just called,” he says through a yawn.  
  
“What did they want?” It seems impossible that they had a show tonight.  
  
Andy shrugs.  
  
“Did you get a number?” Johnny wipes the bangs out of his eyes.  
  
“I thought you’d have it.”  
  
The dogs follow Johnny’s paces around the kitchen, as Andy stares dully at the TV.  
  
It was fine, he reasons, someone at Rough Trade would have the contact.  
  
“I have to get a shower,” he says, pulling the soggy sweater away from his skin, “eat something.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
**11:50 AM**  
  
“This is a bit of a late breakfast,” Morrissey says. He runs his thin fingers through his flattened quiff and stares dourly out the window. Across from him, Johnny stirs his coffee. The rain beat steadily against the parking lot.  
  
“We have the sound check in an hour,” he states.  
  
“Why aren’t you eating?” Morrissey says, as if that’s what they’d been discussing the whole time.  
  
“You know I get nervous the days we have shows,” he says, and cocks his head to meet the singer’s gaze in what he hopes was a reassuring gesture.  
  
“Eat some toast,” Morrissey passes his unfinished plate across the table.  
  
“Moz, I’m fine.”  
  
“I’d feel better if you would,” he says, knowing that that was the card to play.  
  
“It’s going to make me sick,” he bites into the cold toast anyway then pushes it away from him. “We need to be doing is working out the set list for tonight,” Johnny draws a swiggley question mark on the notebook paper he’d brought along.  
  
“Mmhm,” Morrissey pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Pretty Girls,” be begins.  
  
**1:45 PM**  
  
“Alright?” Mike asks through a grimace. He leans into the doorway as Johnny wipes the corner of his mouth on the back of his hand.  
  
“Fine,” he spits into the trashcan.  
  
“Are you sick?” He looks at the guitarist like he might suddenly collapse, or worse; continue to retch.  
  
“Did you need something?” Johnny retrieves the cassettes he was searching for.  
  
“Just wondering where you were, Andy and I are set up,” he gestures to the studio two rooms down the hallway.  
  
“Yeah,” he takes a shaky breath, “I just have to make some phone calls.”  
  
Mike frowns as Johnny leans against the wall.  
  
“Do you want me to do it?”  
  
Johnny’s head perks up for a second as he considered it, “no I should probably take care of it.”  
  
“Come on, let me help---you’ve got shit to do.”  
  
Johnny sighs and looks up at Mike. The drummer seemed earnest enough.  
  
“Could you just call the venue for tonight back? They had some questions about security or something.”  
  
“Yeah sure,” Mike says, happy to see that his bandmate looked visibly relieved.  
  
Johnny straightens up, and pushes his hair back. “Is Mozzer back from the interview?”  
  
“No.”  
  
**5:12 PM**  
  
Someone is nudging him awake; Johnny opens his eyes but the face didn’t become any more familiar. Maybe a roadie he’d had a drink with before. He couldn’t be sure. Everyone was starting to look the same.  
  
“Get up, it’s sound check,” the younger man says, trying to hand Johnny his guitar.  
  
He’d sat down to smoke in the back room of the venue, far enough away that no one would be enticed to join him, watching clouds of white trail in front of his eyes. Now two hours had passed.  
  
“Get up,” he urges him again, looking at the door anxiously, “no one knew where you were.”  
  
From here Johnny can hear Morrissey characteristically counting into the mic as a fumbling bass line droned.  
  
“3, 4, 5, 6…”  
  
The roadie looks relieved as Johnny gets to his feet and grabs his Rickenbacker.  
  
**7:00 PM**  
  
“How was the interview?”  
  
Morrissey pokes at his eye in the mirror, fumbling with a contact.  
  
“They found ten different ways to ask if I’m gay.”  
  
“Are you?” Johnny asks, abashed.  
  
“I really couldn’t say,” Morrissey turns back to grin at Johnny. A glass of wine is poised on the bathroom counter, and Morrissey drains it before returning to the task at hand.  
  
Johnny played with the assortment of beads laid out across the hotel bed.  
  
“I think you’d look stunning in these, darling,” he said at an unnaturally high pitch, and Morrissey purses his lips in protest. He blinks blearily one last time in the mirror before laying back on the bed with the other man, and looking upside-down at the rain fogging up the windows.  
  
“I think we should cancel the gig due to inclement weather, everyone is mandatorily required to stay in bed and drink stale tea.”  
  
“How about… you’re required to stay in bed,” Johnny pounces on the other man, covering the singer’s body with his own, and redirecting his attention from foggy windows to warm lips. In a second, Morrissey’s hands were under his shirt, caressing the other man’s firm abdomen and chest. Johnny couldn’t help but thrust tightly up, and push his tongue against the singers’. “I need this,” Johnny breathes in and kisses sloppily down Morrissey’s neck and arms. It seemed like months since they’d been together like this, there’d no time for more than a kiss between errands when no one was around. Morrissey moans, and turns his head to the side as Johnny licks at his Adam’s apple.  
  
A hesitant knocking makes them both freeze, and turn accusingly towards the shut door.  
  
It started again. Johnny sat up.  
  
“Morrissey, it’s Geoff---the reporters want to take pictures of you before the show to go with the article, are you ready?” He says through the door.  
  
“He doesn’t know I’m here,” Morrissey says, kissing Johnny’s frown.  
  
“Come on,” Geoff says, knocking again.  
  
“You should go,” Johnny says, looking regretfully at the red rimmed lips, bruised, and wet.  
  
Morrissey wraps an arm around Johnny and pulls him back down. The guitarist made a soft “ummpf” sound. “We can’t,” Johnny whispers, kissing Morrissey’s forehead.  
  
“He’s coming,” Johnny yells to Geoff.  
  
Morrissey stares up at him, looking betrayed.  
  
“Later,” Johnny says, lighting a cigarette, wishing he didn’t have to be the adult—always.  
  
Morrissey sighs and rolls away. “Forget it.”  
  
“Don’t be upset at me,” Johnny wipes a hand over his face, tired again.  
  
“I don’t have time to be anything at you, apparently,” Morrissey says, looking critically in the mirror.  
  
But Johnny didn’t have a fight left in him. He should make sure Andy was ready anyway.  
  
**9:00 PM**  
  
“You’re fine,” Johnny reassures his friend. The bassist kept tripping over progressions as he practiced backstage. “I’ll turn up my amp, no one will notice.”  
  
“Mozzer will,” Andy says, looking sadly at his hands.  
  
“Nah,” Johnny shakes his head, but his stomach lurches at the thought.  
  
“I need a drink,” the sound guys were passing around a flask of gin, which Johnny artfully snags. He finds the backdoor of the club, and slips outside.  
  
The rain had slowed, now it was a fine mist in the dark. Johnny watches orange street lights reflect off puddles in the cement. He tips the gin back quick and swigged it until he gags.  
It was a ritual he’d developed during the American tour that seemed entirely justified. It didn’t help his stomach, but it soothed his mind.  
  
The gin burns his throat, so his tilts his head back in the rain, and lets the cool mist fall against his face. He takes another swig and repeats the exercise until the bottle was empty, and he felt OK enough to continue.  
  
**10:30 PM**  
  
He stamps along with the beat, as the flashing lights pulsate through the lenses of his sunglasses. The crowd had been rowdy from the get-go, and he noticed Morrissey standing farther back from the edge of the stage than usual. Even here, even now, Johnny thinks of all the small things that needed to be done, and the big things, and decided there was no longer a difference. He stares distantly at the gladioli that he keeps trampling on; not much longer until the set was done.  
  
He doesn’t realize it’d happened for a few oblivious minutes. With the screaming girls, and the speakers, and it was, after all, dark. But Morrissey isn’t singing.  
  
Somehow Shoplifters had become an instrumental. Johnny continues to play, but cranes his head to the right, only to see Geoff and a roadie, untangling Morrissey from the crowd, and hauling him backstage. Only the fans in the front seemed to realize any change, and watch the frontman being dragged into the dark. Andy is staring over at Johnny for direction, but this wasn’t the first time they went endured a set without the singer. They finish out the song, and then the house lights go dark. It must have been Geoff’s doing. He swung his guitar off, and goes to investigate.  
  
“Damnit Johnny, I thought you were taking care of security,” Grant Showbiz, cuts him off before he properly rounds the corner.  
  
“What happened?” Johnny asks, staring over the other man’s shoulder for a glimpse of Morrissey.  
  
“Oh I see,” Grant laughs, “you’re drunk,” the record exec waves a hand at the air between them, “well guess whose going to have to go out there and tell them no finale.”  
  
Just now Johnny realizes that the crowd is whistling and chanting for the group’s return.  
  
“Get the fuck off of me,” Johnny shoves the other man back and tried to navigate the backstage crowd for signs of the singer. It seems he was sequestered in a bathroom with Geoff.  
  
“Go back out there, take Tim with you,” Grant says, following the guitarist, “Mozzer isn’t going back out his temple is bleeding---you have to go back out there.”  
  
“What happened?” Johnny says again, blood pumping loudly in his ears, “what happened?”  
  
Grant’s eyes widened and he pulled the thin man by the arm, “go.”  
  
**11:50 PM**  
  
“Oh,” Morrissey cracks the door open a bit more.  
  
“Are you okay?” Johnny says, stopping himself from forcing his way in and looking the singer up and down to reassure himself that he was fine.  
  
“I’m shocked that you’re curious,” Morrissey’s blue eyes are hidden from view by the chain link lock still in place.  
  
“Moz,” Johnny breaths, “please,” he leans his head against the doorframe.  
  
The door shut so Morrissey could unhook the lock. Johnny all but falls into the hotel room, eager to be there, after he’d been held up back at the venue by club promoters, and asinine questions from roadies and sound techs.  
  
“What happened?” he says, trying to get a good look at the bandage taped over the other man’s temple, but settles for wrapping his hands around the other man’s waist, no matter how unwelcome the gesture.  
  
“You’re wet” Morrissey pulls from the other man’s grasp. Now Johnny could see there were smaller bruises coloring around his cheek.  
  
“It’s raining,” He states. He can’t read Morrissey’s expressions anymore. They were shut off to him, “but I should probably head back to the venue to make sure everything is sorted.”  
  
Morrissey nods and turns away. Johnny wonders what he’s thinking when he shivers like that.  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this story please consider [buying me more caffeine for my bloodstream.](https://ko-fi.com/A402111U)


End file.
